Category: Large Executive 
Price Range: No data available
Unrivalled on-road presence, refinement, interior ambience
Neither very fast nor fun to drive, a touch on the dear side
The best effort yet from the resurrected Rolls-Royce brand
Despite the global turn-down, these are exciting times for the car industry's most blue-blooded member. You may remember that as little as ten years ago Rolls-Royce was almost moribund, reduced to selling a handful of frankly pretty awful Silver Seraphs, it's light almost completely obscured by the relative success of its Bentley stablemate which, ironically, Rolls-Royce had bought from the receivers back in 1931.
But then both marques were sold, VW buying Bentley outright, BMW paying for the rights to call a new product a Rolls-Royce. The start was slow: the first new Rolls was not delivered until 2003 and it took until last year's release of the Phantom Drophead Coupe before sales reached the originally mooted 1000 per year. But now that number is set to more than double with the introduction next year of what is currently code-named RR4, a smaller more affordable Rolls pitched either at the Bentley Arnage (if you believe Rolls) or the Bentley Flying Spur (if you believe Bentley). And, in the meantime we have this, the Phantom Coupe, the third and final model to be spun off the original Phantom platform.
Its lines clearly follow those of the Drophead, with that wonderfully distinct and purposeful nose, rear hinged 'suicide' doors and two-piece boot lid. But while it lacks the teak decking of the convertible sibling, the elegantly flowing roof line, letterbox rear screen and overall proportions are more pleasing still. Surely few would disagree that this was the most attractive Rolls for more than 40 years?
At £298,000 it costs less than the £314,600 Drophead whose style it so closely follows, but considerably more than the £269,500 currently being asked for the Phantom saloon. For that you get a car based on the same curtailed wheelbase as the Drophead and powered by the 6.75-litre, V12 motor that is at present the only engine at Rolls-Royce's disposal. Perhaps disappointingly given the Coupe's positioning as the most sporting of the new Rolls' to date, it offers not a single more horsepower: then again many prospects may consider 453bhp more than sufficient as it is.
Where the Coupe does start to call its own shots is in the way it has been set up for the road. It comes with stiffer springs and shock absorbers to limit the rate at which the body rolls, slightly firmer steering to give the helm a more substantial feel and a re-engineered brake pedal so that brakes bite harder and sooner than in a Phantom which is deliberately kept quite soft in its responses to help chauffeurs drive more smoothly. No need for that here: despite a wonderfully inviting rear cabin, the Coupe has been designed to be driven by its owner.
